Coldbrook (Hammer)(45)

From somewhere distant, a loud explosion.

‘What was that?’ Jayne asked.

‘Beats me.’ Tommy nodded towards the car park, two hundred feet downhill from them. ‘They heard it, too.’ People were standing still, and some of them were pointing north at the road that wound away from the car park and up towards the more heavily wooded mountains.

Jayne saw where the narrow road passed the car park before it was swallowed behind a screen of trees and a fold in the land. She felt a twinge of unease.

‘Backfire,’ Jayne said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘What’s the matter, babe?’ Tommy could hear the strain in her voice, always could. With him she could never feign comfort when she was in pain. ‘It startin’ in early tonight?’

‘It’s not that,’ she said. A man had walked to the end of the car park and seemed to be on his mobile phone, and he turned to wave back at his wife standing by their car.

‘What’s he shouting?’ Tommy asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Jayne said. ‘Maybe there’s been a smash?’

‘Yeah, must’ve been.’

They walked on, still holding hands and moving a little faster now, eager to see what had happened even though Jayne didn’t really want to.

From behind the fold in the land to the north rose a wisp of smoke, dancing with the breeze. The wisp soon became thicker, and in seconds the smoke was dark and billowing.

‘Tommy . . .’

‘Yeah. Come on.’ They moved faster, although Jayne couldn’t see what they could do. The guy with the mobile phone was running for the far end of the car park, and several other people were moving uncertainly in that direction. The emergency services would have been called, and to cause smoke like that a fire must have taken hold quickly. Maybe a fuel tank had gone up. Her heart thudded and, much as she had no wish to see, human nature drew her on. Everyone loves a train wreck, Tommy had once said when they were stuck in a traffic queue. A mile and an hour later, they’d passed a crashed car and two people being attended by paramedics.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tommy said, ‘that guy’s leaking claret!’

A man was stumbling along the narrow road towards the car park, emerging from behind the trees, and he seemed to be painted from head to foot in red. From this distance Jayne couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was bald and naked from the waist up, the dark red creases that might have been a pattern on a shirt looking more like terrible gashes across his shoulders and stomach.

‘Tommy,’ she said softly, and he turned to shield her from the sight, holding out his hands. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to go and help. You still got that first-aid kit in the trunk?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes were wide with shock, and she could see that he was struggling to hold it together.

‘Let’s go, then,’ she said. ‘Looks like that cellphone guy’s going to reach him first, and . . .’ She trailed off, because the blood-soaked man had fallen to his knees. He pitched forward just at the entrance to the car park, and there was an audible gasp from all observers when his head struck the ground.

The man with the cellphone reached the prone body, and he stood a couple of feet away with his hands held out from his sides. He looked around, as if searching for support, then knelt by the other man’s side.

The smell of burning filled the air now, and there was another thump as the unseen vehicle’s petrol tank went up. A billow of smoke rose beyond the trees, supported on a ball of flame.

‘Someone called the fire department and paramedics?’ Tommy shouted. He received a couple of positive responses, then he and Jayne reached the car park and ran to his old Toyota. She grimaced as she ran, the movements grinding pain into her hips and knees, but she was the lucky one here. She was not bleeding.

‘Tommy?’

‘I can look after him until the paramedics get here,’ he said, and she could see that he was shaking. It took three tries for him to slip his key into the lock, and when he glanced back at her she could see the shock in his expression. She nodded. He’d taken a basic first-aid course so he could look after her when she suffered her infrequent churu blackouts. Not quite comas, a doctor had told her, and she’d wanted to ask What the hell do you know?

The man was standing up. Jayne frowned, already seeing something wrong with the angle of his limbs as they pushed him upright, like a newborn deer just finding its legs, unfamiliar with gravity and light and everything in the world.